


sandcastles

by kybcr



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Gen, Headcanon, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 18:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11903841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kybcr/pseuds/kybcr
Summary: there is virtually nothing permanent in the life of a demigod.





	sandcastles

**Author's Note:**

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before—

The corners of Annabeth’s mouth tug upwards. The cool salt spray tousles her hair, and she lets herself lean back on the pale golden sand to enjoy it. (When they get back to camp, she knows, there will be sand everywhere. In her hair, in her shoes, her socks, and it will get into every corner of her cabin. So she thinks she might as well enjoy it before it became a nuisance.)

Percy is, unbelievably, building a sandcastle. He’s using his control over water to make a little moat. His castle is unfortunately very ugly, all sagging and cracks, very bottom-heavy.

“That looks more like a pile of pegasi turd,” she comments.

He shrugs, flipping his messy black hair. “I’m no architect. Care to help with my castle, Wise Girl?”

“Only because I can’t stand to hear you call that sandy mess a castle, Seaweed Brain.” she retorts.

Annabeth crouches down next to him, shoes crunching in the sand. First she completely flattens the existing structure.

“Hey!” complains Percy. “I spent a lot of time on that!”

She checks her watch, squinting through her dyslexia. (It was an infinitely bad idea to get a digital watch, in hindsight, but they had lights, which was more useful in the dark). “We’ve only been here for twenty minutes.”

“It felt like a lot longer,” he mutters quietly. Of course it does. ADHD.

Annabeth mentally forms a plan for the sandcastle. “Anyways. Do we want, like, a gothic style cathedral thing, or maybe an Oriental palace…?”

Percy stares at her incredulously, green eyes wide. “Are you for real? We’re doing something Greek. Do we, as demigods, have any other choice, legally?”

“Point taken. We start with a foundation. Have you got something we can use as a bucket?”

***

In barely ten minutes it looks like a castle. In five more it looks impressively regal, for a sand structure. The corners are crisp, the walls are smooth, each pillar perfectly carved with a piece of sharp driftwood. It’s the temple she has wanted to build at camp for so long, but in miniature.

“It’s so… perfect.”

“I know, right?” agreed Annabeth. “It’s amazing.”

He snorts. The sun is setting behind her and she can see the reflection of the molten red sun in his eyes. With a jolt, she realises that he’s been facing the sun this whole time so she didn’t have to.

“Very modest. I mean, it’s a bit too perfect, isn’t it? I think it needs some decoration.”

This is the very thing that Annabeth is the worst at: keeping an open mind. Everything she designs is perfect. It shouldn’t need any more improvement. But she tries to remind herself that not everyone has the same tastes as her. 

“What are you thinking?” she asks, trying to keep a neutral tone. 

Apparently it didn’t work. Percy frowns. “No, no, I’m not saying it needs to be improved. I mean, right now it’s very _you_. This castle literally screams _Annabeth-freaking-Chase._ It was my idea to make a castle in the first place, but you pretty much made the entire thing. I thought maybe some seaweed or shells would be nice.”

They both get up, wobbling slightly. (Her legs and neck are cramped from crouching for so long.) She looks around, chalky white shells dotting the stretch of cream-colored sand. 

In a few minutes they’ve gathered several fragmented shells. Percy is already carefully arranging some. They’re mostly bivalves, but a few spiral shells are there. She notices three shells next to his foot. 

They’re pretty big, about the length of a finger, spiraling to a perfect point. The shells are pale blue, mottled with pastel pink and white spots. 

“What are you going to do with those?” she asks, but even as she says the words she feels a tiny twinge of regret. Their sand-castle is not permanent. Nothing in her life is. These beautiful shells will be washed away into the foamy waves, and no one would see them after that. 

Percy turns to look. “With what?” 

His brow furrows. “I didn’t see those! They’re really nice… wouldn’t it be a shame to leave them here?”

She shrugs. “Maybe your dad sent them.”

“Maybe,” he says doubtfully. “How about this: we put one shell on the castle, and we each keep the other two for ourselves.”

She bends down and scoops them up, tossing one to Percy and perching the last one atop the castle. It looks a bit like Atlantis would, she thinks. Maybe Percy was aiming for that. 

Silhouetted against a purple sky mottled with clouds, the castle looks like it belongs on the bottom of the sea. She rolls the shell in her fingers, brushing over every minute groove and bump.

***

three months later— 

Annabeth hears steps crunching behind her, and for just a split second she imagines Percy walking towards her. But even without looking she knows it’s not him. He’s been missing for two months, and yet every distant breath, every faint footstep, every flash of black hair is him at first.

She shifts, crouching in a different position on the sand. Something digs into her thigh, and she winces in pain. Annabeth digs around in her pocket for a moment before fishing out a shell.

It’s one of three shells they found on the beach when building their castle. 

Despite herself, a single tear rolls down her face, salty as the sea in front of her. 

She comes here whenever she can. The briny smell, the green waves sloshing, is the closest she’s been to Percy for months.

The steps are of another camper, but as soon as he catches her eye he turns away and walks the opposite direction. Good.

Annabeth looks around. Where had they built the sandcastle? The thing about beaches was that the sand and waves were constantly in a state of change. Within minutes everything was slightly different. After a day nothing was the same. No patch of sand looked familiar. It changed too much.

Anger, and hurt, and despair well up in her chest, choking her. There is nothing in her life that she can rely on. Nothing. Luke had betrayed her. Thalia had left, her father hadn’t cared, and inevitably now Percy is gone. She knows it isn’t his fault. It feels a lot like his fault. It's so much easier to blame it on him.

She rubs her eyes furiously. Does Percy still have his shell? It’s mid-morning, and the sun’s stifling rays are on her back, drawing beads of sweat from her hairline. The sun glints off the shell, making it sparkle in places and casting dark shadows on others.

In the next few days, weeks, months, she holds onto the shell. It is her purpose, her anchor. It ties her down the way Percy used to. She debates having one of the Hephaestus kids lacquer it to protect it, but it’s too personal and anyways, it never seems to wear down or break. It looks different in various settings, sometimes darker or paler. It looks best in sunlight. She examines it the only way she knows how: as an architect. 

When nightmares come crawling from underneath her eyelids, she wakes, clutching the shell so tightly there are red dents in her fingers.

She doesn’t kid herself with delusions of some actual, tangible connection to Percy through the shell. Annabeth is pragmatic and logical. She will not let grief overcome logic. The shell is a memento, that’s all. But what, she tells herself, is the harm in keeping a memento? 

(In some dark corner of her mind, she realises that if Percy never returns then the shell will be one of the only things she has left of him. But she refuses to think about this.)

***

six months later— 

“Throw it away,” says the she-wolf. “It is meaningless, a thing of your past. Your past does not matter.”

Percy nods vaguely in agreement, but pockets the little blue shell all the same. It’s a bit lighter colored than the sky. In the cloud-diffused light it’s almost white.

He can’t put his finger on it, but something about it is important. It has something to do with Annabeth.

Who is Annabeth? He doesn’t know. He only knows that she matters. He must survive this for her. 

It’s quite strange, seeing something familiar for the first time. It happened when he fished the ballpoint pen out of his pocket, uncapped it, and beheld a bronze sword engraved with _anaklusmos_. He didn’t know how he could read it because he couldn’t seem to easily read anything else, but it felt like it belonged in his hand.

Percy doesn’t know where the shell comes from either or how it got to be in his pocket, but he keeps it throughout his training with the wolves.

She knows he keeps it. Percy knows she knows. But she doesn’t say anything about it after the first time. 

After crossing the river with Juno he immediately checks his pocket for the shell. It’s still there. It never seems to get damaged by anything he does— not that he’d try and break it on purpose. 

Then Percy reaches Camp Jupiter, and something about immediately arriving and leaving on a quest seems too familiar. Like he’d done it before. He feels like he belongs, but only part of him. But everything seems a shade off, like the smell of your favorite dish, but it’s been prepared by a different chef. It’s not right. Only the shell is.

Halfway across the country, two demigods hold two shells, thinking of each other.


End file.
